Bounty program should cost Williams the season

Former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams is in hot water over his bounty program. (Gerald Herbert/Associated Press)

This New Orleans Saints bounty story is going to be a big mess.

What defensive coordinator Gregg Williams did was so blatantly against the rules that I would not be surprised if he is suspended for a full season.

The league simply cannot tolerate such rules violations, particularly in today’s climate when the NFL is going out of its way to promote player safety.

Williams, who left the Saints after this past season to join Jeff Fisher with the Rams, issued a statement apologizing and saying that he knew it was wrong when he did it.

“I want to express my sincere regret and apology to the NFL, Mr. Benson, and the New Orleans Saints fans for my participation in the ‘pay for performance’ program while I was with the Saints. It was a terrible mistake, and we knew it was wrong while we were doing it. Instead of getting caught up in it, I should have stopped it. I take full responsibility for my role. I am truly sorry. I have learned a hard lesson and I guarantee that I will never participate in or allow this kind of activity to happen again.”

That shouldn’t be nearly enough for the NFL. My guess is the league had already discussed with Williams how he should handle the release of the information once the story broke.

So maybe his suspension won’t be so harsh. It should be.

This is far worse than Spygate.

Bill Belichick still maintains that he didn’t break a rule and by the letter of the law, I don’t think it was ever established that he actually did. But the NFL went with the court of public opinion and hit Belichick and the Patriots with a huge fine.

Let’s not argue that case, but if we did, Spygate couldn’t be responsible for injury to a player. It wasn’t a blatant and clear violation of league contracts.

There is simply no defense for paying players to knock opponents out of games. None.

Football is a violent game. I love the big hits. And I don’t like it that the league fines players for making clean hits.

I was a huge Jack Tatum fan. I loved his book. Laughed at the part about the joy he and George Atkinson derived from knocking players out.

But this is different. It is a different day, a different age.

A coach running a bounty program that rewarded players for taking out quarterbacks – it has already been reported that at least $10,000 was on the table to send Brett Favre to the bench for good – is not what the game is all about.

No chance Fisher would do it, and he shouldn’t. That’s his best friend, and almost certainly Fisher knew Williams coaches that way, because I’d bet he did it at Tennessee too. It isn’t uncommon. It’s just that they got busted.

What about accountability? Why does this not go to the top? Payton knew and Loomis knew. Benson found out and told Loomis to stop it and he didn’t. The people in charge who knew this was going on should be held accountable. The old saying is “heads will roll” not “fingers will roll”.

I find this “investigation” by the NFL to be about a bunch of foolishness. Coaches are at interviews week after week talking about getting to the QB knocking him down. How to stop players that make plays saying we need to play smash mouth football. What do people think this is code for? What, because players bow their heads in prayer after vicious hit he didn’t mean it? Fans need to grow up. The Saints simply got caught. The coach is coaching for a team in the same conference and starts singing like a Mafia soldier who thinks might get whacked. That guy will go about his way coaching next year while the Saints organization will deal with the aftermath. The over the top reaction to this is about as bad as people being shocked athletes were taking PEDs. A guy is built like Superman and it’s all natural? Frankly, I’m more appalled an NFL player attempting to acquire cakes of cocaine like Tony Montana to sell to his “high profile” clients was simply swept under the rug. How much investigation did the NFL do into that? No one probably remembers his name.

Dirty is dirty. Bounties go too far. The Saints, and Titans before them and still, are among the dirtiest in the league and have been for a long time. To allow Williams to coach at all this season is a joke IF Williams was the true facilitator of the program. He makes a joke out of hard, fast, hard play. You attempting to defend him with “everyone does it, only he got caught” is still the weakest and least logical “defense” in play in WRONG/illegal/unethical situations today.

Mr. Solomon – I agree with your assessment. I am sure the majority of “knock outs” and “cart offs” on any given Sunday are relative to knee and head injuries. I know, I know. Football is a violent sport and the players know the risks. But this is fairly despicable considering these could be career threatening injuries and have even longer term impact.

So now I have to ask: What about the HC? Surely he is partly culpable in this.

My thoughts on punishment is as follows –
Saints – Loss of 1st round draft choice for 2012 & $500K fine
Gregg Williams – $500K fine and suspension of 4 games.
The reputation of the games is at stake here. Football (IMO) is the greatest game in the world and this can not/will not be tolerated

I think they should suspend Williams….fine the players involved and take draft choices away from the Saints…..Oh yeah the coach should be fined and suspended as well…..maybe forfeit some games next season too….

With all of the fines handed out for hard hits these days, the NFL has no choice put to hand out stiff penalties. Can you imagine how weak Roger Goodell will look to the players if he only punishes the “players” and not the ringleaders?

And i think your letting Sean Payton off the hook. He knew about it. He was the captain of the ship. If your giving a year suspension to Williams, then Sean Payton has to at least receive an 8 game suspension.

No, It should NOT cost Williams the SEASON… it should cost him never having another job in the NFL operiod and if the NCAA or a high school program EVER hired him they should be immediately investigated ! This man should be invited to find a NEW carreer path! ! ! !

Every player in the NFL is being paid to “knock out” the opponent. There is no restraint clause in their contracts. BREAKING NEWS: Football is a violent contact sport. If they don’t want to do that let them play checkers.

It’s hard to reconcile the fact that players are paid and taught to hit their opponents as hard as they can with the outrage people have (including you King) that they were trying to cause injury while doing so.

During the Gregg Williams era, did the Saints cause significantly more injuries (or more severe injuries) than any other team? I would guess no, because in a sense, the nature of football is to cause injury.

I don’t agree that he should pay a p[enalty. He should never be allowed to be associated with any professional football team again. That would send a real message and be equal with what he was trying to cause.

I think one being lost here is that paying these bounties to players is also a violation of the league salary cap, and I think whatever penalties exist for circumventing the cap should be handed down to the Saints as well.

I would be ok with a lifetime ban of Williams, since information now shows a chronic disregard for league rules and player safety going back at least 6+ years. Of course this guy is sorry, he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. If Peyton knew and didn’t do anything about it, he should get a year suspension. Loomis is a POS and needs to lose his job. I don’t see him working in the NFL ever again either. And each and every player that chipped money in should get at least a 4 to 6 game ban. And to top it all off, fine the team a cool million or 2 and strip their 2nd round pick this year or their 1st next year, and strip the franchise tag from them for 2012.

Of course… everyone breaks these rules, but like tampering, you only get punished if you are stupid enough to get caught. Sorry Saints fans, but the NFL is going to make an example of you, and it isn’t gonna be pretty.

The best way to make sure this doesn’t continue, I would suspend Gregg Williams and Sean Payton for training camp and 8 games, suspend any players on any team that were paid extra to injure someone for at least 1 game and take away the Saints first round pick.

If a player is paid a bonus to take out another player in the future, the player should be suspended for however many games the injured player misses plus 1 game.

I agree, Williams should lose at least a season. The game is rough enough without having coaches encourage hurting other players. Everybody in a decision making capacity within the Saints who knew about this should pay some kind of price. Fines, suspensions, and loss of draft picks are a good start. However, this is likely to be like the PED argument. How many others are doing the same thing.

Maybe you should save some indignation for the NFL and the way they threw the NFC championship game that year. It was so obvious that they issued an apology to Minnesota before the super bowl. Roger Godell is a cheap pimp and did everything to give new Orleans a win. He is no different from any other crook

JS I love to see our guy’s make a big play or a sack as much as the next fan, but I also like to see both guys get up and continue playing also. Rumor has it Fat Albert was paid off with 3 large tubs of Rocky Road ice cream for belly flopping Schaub out of the game! lol

The bounty system didn’t work as the saints had one of the worst defenses in the league. They bounty system is part of 70 percent of the teams in the league and the saints should not be made an example of.

I don’t know exactly what the NFL has for evidence and what the exact crimes are, so it is difficult to be exact on what I rthink a punishment should be. I would start with sitting Williams for a season. Fining the Saints and Sean Payton $1 million each, and taking away the Saints’ first-round draft picks for 2012 and 2013. I doubt I would punish any players. They should already have been fined for any illegal hits they delivered, and we’re not talking about enough money that would negate said fines if any were incurred. Plus, people in position of authority are the ones you want to send the message to, not the idiots who carried out the plan. Of course, if players lied about it during the investigation, that might make me hit them with fines, so that I can discourage lying to the league when I bring you in for information during an investigation. It isn’t like lying on the witness stand, but if you have clear proof and you have a chance to send a message, you do it.

I have an issue with the Saints being the one who lose the draft picks just because the owner tried to stop it. Take away a first rounder, fine. But I think it would be a much more powerful message if the GM and coaches had a value placed on their head (i.e. if you hire Williams you lose the next 1st and 2nd round draft picks you have, etc). The owner suffers with the forfeiture of these picks and if he decides his GM who didn’t stop it is worth losing an extra draft pick then fine but give the Saints as an organization beyond the people in charge of this nefarious group a chance to not be decimated as a result of actions they tried to stop.

If you are the owner of a team and you couldn’t stop something such as this, you deserve to be punished. Not to mention, once the owner found out about it, did he report it to the NFL, or simply tell the GM to put a stop to it? Had he told the GM to put a stop to it and informed the NFL, I would agree with you. I am certain he didn’t do that, so the team gets punished too. … It is also just the way these things are done. If there is a gag order, for instance on something, and a GM breaks the gag order (see: Daryl Morey), he gets a personal fine and the organizations gets a fine too, though the owner had nothing to do with the violation. Accountability starts at the top.

This is a FUNDAMENTAL INTEGRITY OF THE GAME ISSUE – nothing less. In this particular case, what happens on the field and is seen by fans everywhere now comes into question because of an underlying motive of pay for injuring opponents. This goes beyond QUESTIONING the integrity of the game like Jeff Van Gundy did by drawing attention to continually unfair and unequal officiating – paying players extra money to injure opponents outside the rules of the game is beyond just questioning.

The NFL must take this matter seriously and demonstrate a zero tolerance for anything that openly challenges the integrity of professional football. That should mean a lifetime ban for Gregg Williams, and huge fines for the New Orleans Saints organization (e.g., 25% of revenues for the duration of the time Williams was employed). Actions taken by the league should not, however, take away from the on-field product promised to fans. Forfeiture of games or draft picks should not be pursued for those reasons. The league should also set a precedent that any further instances of player bounties or other actions detrimental to the game’s integrity will be dealt with harshly.

Just as is the case with players who violate the league’s substance or conduct rules, being part of the NFL is a PRIVILEGE and not an entitlement. With that in mind, Williams’ “program” should never be tolerated.

The NFL should learn from Major League Baseball and the National Basketball League and the actions they took when the integrity of the game was seriously challenged by miscreatants like the 1919 Chicago White Sox players, Pete Rose and a referee who was betting on the outcome of games.